As a developer, my most important tools are a pen and a notebook \ stacker news ~devs

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As a developer, my most important tools are a pen and a notebook hamatti.org/posts/as-a-developer-my-most-important-tools-are-a-pen-and-a-notebook

584 sats \ 8 comments \ @kepford 29 May devs

I've tried this many times over my career and its never stuck. I have terrible hand writing and I suck at taking hand written notes.

I do however swear by keeping notes digitally and I have for well over 5 years now. I keep a daily worklog of what I'm doing. I reference it pretty often. I do it all in plain text and sync it using Syncthing to my various devices (except iOS which is annoying). I'm a big plain text maxi. They have a post discussing their note taking process.

But, what has worked for me is using paper for diagramming architectures for systems and application stacks. I started doing this with designing web sites info architecture back in the day and have used it ever since. Index cards are a great tool for that work. White boards are also very helpful.

I do find that using non-digital tools opens up another part of my brain. I need to do it more.

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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @sox 30 May

I don't have a precise way of taking notes, and that's bad. I use a blank vscode page to lay out my thinking and sometimes I also re-write it on sticky notes or A4s from the printer. At the end of the day I have 10 sticky notes and 3-4 plain text files and to understand something you have to connect all the pieces lol.

Lately I've been eyeing some small digital whiteboards, they're super cheap on aliexpress but I can't comment on their quality (maybe non-existent)

53 sats \ 0 replies \ @cyb3r17 29 May

I have a tablet for this with obsidian and concepts, writing really solves half the problem. Whiteboards are cool too.

82 sats \ 4 replies \ @grayruby 29 May

I am not a developer but I always have a pen and notebook beside me. I don't mind taking digital notes if I am on the go but I prefer written.

113 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 29 May

My main reason for sticking to digital notes is that I don't lose them and I can search them up later. If I could somehow search my handwritten notes and have them automatically uploaded to the cloud, I'd stick to handwriting.

40 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford OP 29 May

I used to carry a small stack of index cards and a space pen everywhere I went. These days I don't. I take most notes on a Linux machine and sometimes my GrapheneOS phone. I mostly read notes on my phone though.

20 sats \ 1 reply \ @nichro 30 May

Do you hand written note folks ever back up those notebooks by digitizing them?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 30 May

No I just keep the notebooks.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nichro 30 May

I like taking notes and the idea of taking notes, but I struggle with keeping a consistent system and habit.

Got stuff scattered all over like 3 different note taking apps and a few in random notepad/txt files

Short notes, blurbs, random thoughts and ideas, copy pasta, code snippets for solving that one weird USB port issue on Ubuntu 16.04 almost a decade ago...

I know some folks swear by the fancy full feature note takers like Obsidian and that other one where you write thoughts and draw lines to relate them. Maybe I gotta give it a serious shot sometime.

I often have the mental block that spending too much effort in note taking and organizing them, fully learning to use a note taking app or system efficiently is somehow unproductive time. I know I'm probably wrong though.